Gamers looking forward to Halo 3 come in two varieties; those who will rip off that plastic wrap, toss the game into their system and immediately jump online to blow their friends to hell. And on the other end of the spectrum, a much smaller percentage who have been looking forward to "finishing the fight" and learning what exactly transpired after the aggravatingly abrupt ending of Halo 2... and then kicking some online ass afterwards. I fall squarely into the latter minority.

The Halo 3 single-player experience is honestly a fairly by the numbers affair. Bigger and better visuals, enemies and environments? Yup. More cool weapons, vehicles and gadgets? Check. A decently written storyline to help wrap up some of the loose ends? Thankfully, yes. Halo 3 picks up right where part 2 left off, with Master Chief bailing out and hurtling to earth in a Forerunner escape craft. After he crash lands and recovers, the game's campaign essentially begins. This time around, you play as Master Chief and Master Chief only. The Arbiter, while still holding up his promise to help punish the Covenant, fights alongside you a majority of the game as an invincible CPU controlled ally. While I personally didn't mind some of The Arbiter's chapters in Halo 2, most of the fanbase seemed to dislike them so Bungie made the wise choice to streamline the game and just focus on good old MC.

Halo 3 plays just like the Halo you have grown to love, except with a few enhancements and extras. Besides the addition of some new fangled weaponry like the laser-guided plasma cannon, and vehicles such as the speedy Covenant chopper, the returning weapons and vehicles have been further tweaked and balanced. In terms of weapons though, the absolute coolest new items are the various mounted turrets found scattered throughout the environments. It doesn't seem like anything special at first, until you realize that you can literally tear the turrets off their mounts and walk around ripping apart anything and everything in sight. Besides those, the biggest overall change to the game is probably the several new gadgets dreamed up by Bungie. The bubble shields, auto-turrets, regeneration fields and whatnot certainly look cool, but they aren't all quite as useful as one would hope. Higher level enemies and other players seem to quickly breach the defensive shields and at best they'll give you a quick few seconds to rest and heal or deal a little bit of damage. If you were hoping for some real changes to the core gameplay, such as a cover system of some type, look elsewhere. Halo 3 is still a straight up run and gun style FPS and it hasn't deviated much from the previous formula.

The chapters and missions follow the usual Halo formula, with plenty of well-placed checkpoints throughout, interspersed with realtime cutscenes to push the plot along. There is much less reliance on backtracking as compared to previous games in the series, which is a very welcome decision. With the exception of the last two chapters or so, Halo 3 is extremely well paced with a smooth difficulty curve. Towards the end of the game however, things suddenly become extremely (and sometimes frustratingly) difficult for some reason and the quality of the experience takes a dip. The very last bit of gameplay before the ending is a pretty exhilarating throwback to Halo 1, and is a rather interesting way to finish up the game. While the story clears up a majority of the outstanding plot holes, the Halo 3 still finds a way to introduce a handful of confusing "wtf" moments. I was looking forward to learning a little more about Master Chief, but alas, that doesn't really happen. By the time the credits roll, you may feel that you know just as much about The Arbiter as MC. Besides the rushed-feeling of the very last chapters, the campaign mode's most glaring issue is length. In Normal mode, the game will only takes about 7 - 8 hours to play through, so if you fancy yourself a good FPS player it makes sense to jump into the higher level of difficulties. There's also the distinct lack of any boss-like encounters, with only 2 or 3 really memorable epic-scale battles. There's a moderate number of Achievements to unlock in the mode, along with the hidden skulls to find, so there is some built-in replayability for those who loved it the first time through. And of course there's the addictive ability to play through the entire campaign mode with up to 3 other players either locally or online via Xbox Live.

Bungie could have released Halo 3 as an online-only multiplayer title, a la Shadowrun and Warhawk, and it would be received equally as well. After zipping through the somewhat anemic campaign in no time flat, its shocking at how much meatier the multiplayer modes in the game are in comparison. There's a reason why, to this day, that Halo 2 is the most played online title on Xbox Live and Halo 3 will easily take that ball and run with it, likely never to look back. The sheer amount of modes available and ways to play to the game is practically unmatched. Everything from the ability to blow each other up in a straight-up deathmatch, to working on your very own collaborative machinima series, to even designing (or rather editing) your own customized multiplayer levels are integrated right into the game. Add on top of that the functionality to actually upload and share these videos, screenshots and levels online from within the game. And wait, there's more. The official game website is already up and running as well in order to further facilitate everything from multiplayer stat tracking to your personally uploaded goodies. In terms of multiplayer, as evident from the unprecedented online beta test phase, Bungie clearly spent a ridiculous amount of time tweaking and balancing the various gameplay modes. Needless to say, Halo 3 feels like it was essentially designed around all the online components and functionality rather than the other way around. In the unlikely event that you were planning on playing the game for the single player mode only, you'd be more or less missing what makes Halo 3, "Halo 3".

Heading into the primetime Holiday gaming season and beyond, developers seem to be whipping up some truly incredible looking next-generation titles. A year ago, Halo 3 was cutting edge; at this point in time, it's slightly less impressive. The game is incredibly polished, that's for sure, and the production values are way up there as expected. In terms of scale, Halo 3 is indeed awesome. The engine effortlessly handles a large amount of action within some fairly huge, detailed environments with barely a dropped frame or a clipped polygon. Up close, the game clearly tosses around some high quality textures and dramatic lighting and effects. There are some definite "Halo 2 in HD" moments mixed in with the good especially during the indoor, smaller scale chapters. The animation in particular is stiff and dated when compared to games like BioShock and Gears of War, not to mention the upcoming Call of Duty 4 and Killzone 2. Some of the objects and characters are actually a bit on the angular side, and some jagged edges here and there aren't uncommon, but Bungie generally does a good job in masking these minor issues. On the other hand, the Havok physics engine is put to good use once again, in both characters and environments, and Bungie provided more than enough destruction and interaction to please most anyone. While it has aged a little since its unveiling, Halo 3 still looks and feels very much like a next-gen game.

One area that Bungie has nailed once again is the audio. Halo 3 has some of the best Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound support yet, and playing the game in stereo is akin to playing the game on a standard definition TV. In other words, you're missing out on a big part of the immersive experience if you have yet to spring for a proper home theater audio kit. The dramatic and dynamic soundtrack is likewise perfect, and kicks in exactly when needed. The voicework is very much like Halo 2, and is overall pretty well done. The friendly and enemy chatter is top notch though, with a nice amount of rather humorous and timely quotes to fit most situations. "Hahaha, I'm shooting a dead guy!" while one of your fellow Marines decides to pump round after round into an already dispatched enemy was by far my favorite.

Halo 3 is one of those rare games that is 100% immune to review scores. Whether it's an A or a C-, nearly everyone who owns an Xbox 360 will pick up a copy (as they should). I personally expected more out of the single player campaign in terms of story and depth, but everything else Bungie has packed into the game makes up for it - in spite of my usual nitpicking. It's a fight worth finishing so if you haven't already, get out there and do just that.